video chat – Looking Forward

In many of my presentations, I have pointed out that the Internet is still very much in its early stages. There are tremendous gaps in the availability of high speed, low latency Internet everywhere. It will only be at some point in the future that we could truly expect to have a visual conversation with almost anyone, almost anywhere on the globe.

Beyond expanding connectivity, there are other factors standing in the way of ubiquitous high quality visual communications.

First, the software – the interface that users have to deal with – is quite awkward. There are still too many instances where software, like Skype, just doesn’t work well or freezes or otherwise discourages people from everyday use.

Second, more important, the mindset or culture of users seems not to have changed yet to readily accommodate visual conversations over the Internet everywhere. You surely know someone who just doesn’t want to communicate this way. There used to be many people who thought the telephone shouldn’t replace face-to-face meetings and trying to do so was rude and/or too expensive.

Indeed, I use a rough parallel that we are today with the Internet about where we were with the telephone at the end of the 1920s. That was more than fifty years after the telephone had been invented. Of course, we’re not even fifty years into the life of the Internet.

Although the parallel between phone network and Internet is fairly obvious, it is enlightening or amusing to see history repeat itself. Here is a 1916 advertisement that hails how the telephone is “annihilating both time and space” – what we’ve also heard in more recent years about the Internet.

While there were many articles written at the time about the impact of telephones on society, the economy and life, even in the 1920s (or 30s or 40s or 50s …), telephone usage was not taken for granted. Among other things, long distance calling was not widely considered something most people would do.

Mobile telephony was discussed but not really in existence yet.

There was even a product that anticipated today’s Twitter and similar feeds – or maybe it was just a concept for a product, since vaporware was around even a hundred years ago.

The chart below shows the pattern of historical adoption of telephones in the US from 1876 until 1981.

From the perspective of 1981, never mind 2016, the first fifty years of telephony were the early age.

And since 1981? We’ve seen mobile phones overtake land lines in worldwide usage and become much more than devices for just talking to people.

So imagine what the next 100 years of Internet development will bring.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/150726984612/the-internet-of-a-hundred-years-ago]

[note this is an updated version of an earlier post in the beginning of 2014]

A few weeks ago, the New York Times had a story about HP and its telecommuters – “Back-to-Work Day at H.P.” While not quite calling for an end to telecommuting as Yahoo done earlier this year, HP said they had added space and “invited” its employees back to the office. Once again it seemed that a big tech company was doing a decidedly untech thing – downplaying the use of technology and pointing out how it can’t really substitute for old fashioned patterns of interaction.

How do tech companies expect people to believe them, if their words don’t match their actions?

While the current technology for virtual interactions and a virtual workforce can certainly be improved, it’s not the major obstacle anymore. A more important part of the disconnect between words and actions is that these tech companies are engineering leaders, but not leaders in organizational culture – and it is culture that is the real hurdle here.

Tech and non-tech companies that want to ensure success for their virtual workforce need to build an appropriate culture and practices.

For example, everyone involved with telecommuting needs to understand that email, text, even phone calls constitute only a small part of the communications that human beings expect and is insufficient to support a high level of trust. However, video chatting does enable people to get much of what would be communicated in person and has been shown to enhance trust. So video ought to be the rule, not the exception, for virtual interaction.

Another important part of the culture of innovative companies is the encouragement of random interactions and collaboration among people. This is what underlies the Three C’s which Tony Hsieh of Zappo’s emphasizes: collision, community and co-learning.

He clearly believes that this is only possible in a physical environment. But these three C’s can also be well supported in a virtual environment, if the company sets up that environment for such collisions and makes it a part of its everyday culture. Indeed, the range of people who can interact easily in the virtual workforce is much greater than in a physical office.

The company also needs to ensure that telecommuters don’t feel their chance of career advancement is dramatically diminished unless they show up at the office and hobnob with the right executives. The article “Creating an Organizational Culture that Supports Telework” relates a good example of this situation, along with good general guidance on the positive actions that companies need to take.

In sum, as James Surowiecki wrote earlier this year in the New Yorker:

“At companies with healthier corporate cultures, it [telecommuting] often works well, and [former head of Xerox PARC] Seely Brown has shown how highly motivated networks of far-flung experts — élite surfers, say — use digital technologies to transmit knowledge much as they would in person.”

Building a 21^st century culture of successful virtual interaction won’t come easily to companies that developed their more traditional culture in the 20^th century. But in an increasingly virtual and mobile world, it will be necessary for the HPs, Yahoos, and others to flourish.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/69691956542/what-culture-is-needed-for-a-virtual-workforce]

Tag: video chat

The Internet Of A Hundred Years Ago

What Culture Is Needed For A Virtual Workforce?